Tech Banned In Classrooms?
So, one of Yahoo’s little story gatherings today involves today’s kids and technology, including this piece on technology in the classroom.
Now, I can understand phones not being allowed. If there’s an emergency, call the school, and have them page or get the student through administrative means. That’s basically what was done when I was growing up.
The laptop thing is a little more interesting to me, though.
See, I’ve been hearing about, and even felt when I was in school, the burden of having so many books and crap to haul around, and the damage it can do. The fact I see chiropractors here advertising to capitalize on this tells me something.
Personally, I think it’d be great if laptops replaced text and notebooks. I imagine that it could save a lot in the way of paper and trees.
The idea is maybe mass-producing a really low-end laptop, something good for maybe reading over discs or CD-ROMs, and word processing. Nothing more. Then, instead of all these textbooks year after year, there can be a sort of school-issued laptop, and the textbooks go on disc.
I imagine that would be a hell of a lot easier on kids than lugging around a 5-pound literature book, and history, and so on.
I also imagine there are a few bugs in the system there that could stand to be worked out, and of course, different people are going to have different mileage in their view of how practical it is. But as I’ve learned, not everyone’s got the same benefits, such as an easy/timely-to-reach locker to go to between classes as they have to cross the campus to make it to class in the 3 minutes 42.8 seconds that schools give you before you’re marked tardy.
Hey, Bill Gates, you’re in charge of some charitable organizations, right? Maybe this would be a good thing to put your company on…
LBD “Nytetrayn”